Take better aim with anti-crime dollars

By LAWRENCE SHERMAN

Excerpts from testimony before the Subcommittee on Crime of the Committee
on the Juidiciary of the U.S. House of Representatives Oct. 28

Half of all homicides in the U.S occur in the 63 largest cities, which
house only 16 percent of the population. Most of the homicides in those
cities occur in a handful of concentrated poverty areas, which in turn
may constitute some 15 to 20 percent of the populations of those cities.
Our national rates of serious crime are heavily determined by what happens
in our most violent census tracts. With very few exceptions, however,
federal policy does not focus funding on those areas where the most violence
occurs.

The mismatching of federal funds and the problem of violence is not the
policy of any federal agency, but of the legislative formulas used to
allocate the funding. Most of those formulas are based on population,
and give zero weight to the per capita level of violence in a state or
community.

The formulas put violence prevention funding where the votes are, not
where the violence is. ...

What doesnt work

Research has shown that more police, if properly deployed, can reduce
crime. But the existing body of evidence doesnt speak well for two
other police efforts: the D.A.R.E. program and gun buybacks. ...

Several ... studies have show D.A.R.E. as commonly implemented to be
ineffective in preventing future substance abuse. ... It is a program
supported by strong advocates, not strong evidence.

President Clintons recent decision to spend $15 million on gun
buybacks for public housing projects is a step in the right direction
in putting the money where the crime is. However, it is the right place
but the wrong program. Several scientific studies have shown that gun
buybacks do not work. It is a sellout to doing what works to make news,
not public safety. ...

Restore youth justice

Far beneath the tip of the iceberg in Littleton and other schools lie
the nonviolent 95 percent of the 3 million juvenile arrests each year.
The vast majority of these arrests result in no action taken against the
juvenile. ... This situation ... is feeding a rapidly growing social movement
in the U.S.: restorative juvenile justice. Congress should fund pilot
programs of this innovative idea. Inspired in part by recent innovations
in New Zealand and Australia, this movement is diverting juvenile cases
from court in order to hold conferences involving offenders and their
families, victims and their families, and other concerned parties. The
conferences are far more emotionally intense than court, and focus on
the moral duty of offenders to repair the harm they have caused. The conferences
result in a restitution agreement, the completion of which will lead to
dropping charges and a clean criminal record. ...

School safety

Youth violence knows no boundaries, but governments at all levels can
take steps to work more closely to prevent youth violence. Confidentiality
laws and turf battles often keep law enforcement and education leaders
from working together. In the spirit of innovation and evaluation, I would
encourage Congress to create demonstration sites where computer networks
with strong safeguards against privacy violations be created
to allow local officials to work together more closely to share information
and work together toward common goals. Federal incentives attached to
the $4 billion in annual federal funding for crime prevention programs
would be a strong way to ensure cooperation and innovation in the area
of data sharing.

Lawrence Sherman, Ph.D., is the director of the Fels Center of Government
and Albert M. Greenfield Professor of Human Relations. See his report,
Preventing Crime: What Works, What Doesnt, Whats Promising,
atwww.preventingcrime.org.

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